Product Description
The Halt During the Chase
Author: Rosemary Tonks
Format: Paperback
Brilliantly funny and brutal, this is the story of one woman's escape from the clutches of polite society, by the incredible mid-century writer who destroyed her own books.
'No matter her insistence that she just dashed them off to make 'a lot of red-hot money' - Tonks's novels are thrillingly strange things. She had the knack' — London Review of Books
Sophie's mother knows exactly how to needle her. Sophie's lover Philip knows how to stab her in the heart. She may be clever, charming and smart but is Sophie destined to be an eternal bit-part?
After a particularly callous throwaway remark from Philip, Sophie knows she must break away - from him, from her mother, from the snobbery of her Hampstead Heath upbringing. Being good and agreeable has brought nothing but loneliness; setting out alone might finally bring Sophie satisfaction.
Back in print after many decades, this novel is a piece of dynamite, written by an extraordinary and little-known writer, the inimitable Rosemary Tonks.
'A bubbly, empathetic and ultimately lovely novel of a belated coming-of-age' — New York Times
'Nobody writes about angsty women like Tonks' — The Millions
About the Author
Rosemary Tonks (1928-2014) was a colourful figure in the London literary scene during the 1960s. She published two poetry collections, Notes on Cafés and Bedrooms and Iliad of Broken Sentences, and six novels, from Opium Fogs to The Halt During the Chase. Tonks wrote for the Observer, The Times, New York Review of Books, Listener, New Statesman and Encounter, and presented poetry programmes for the BBC.
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